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mikemuch writes "When his lovely girlfriend Glenda needed a new PC, Jason Cross, who spends much of the week assembling PCs with the latest gear to test for ExtremeTech, decided he would let her build it herself. She gave him her list of needs, he came up with a part list, and then watched as she did all the screwdriver wielding herself. Despite a DOA hard drive and some mis-connected wires, everyone was smiling when it was all finished. (Slide show here.)"

Gee. Isn't it great that slashdot provides encouragement such as this? Now girls don't have to be afraid of putting a PC together! I hope slashdot will provide further encouragement by covering the first girl to attend University or do nuclear physics.

OTOH she still had to get her husband to authorise a loan from the bank.

... which any woman should do anyway, even today, unless she's doing it on behalf of a corporation.

When you're married (and in the absence of a prenuptial agreement), all your assets are co-owned with your spouse, which means your creditors will come after both of you when the sh*t hits the fan. You have to be a pretty big asshole to get a loan without clearing it with your spouse first.

Tss.... I mean, I understand the joke, I sure do. But I'm still a bit miffed.- I'm on/.- I'm a geek- I have a girlfriend- She is good looking and pregnant to boot- I caused the pregnancy- To top it off, she's a former HP-UX and Service Guard field technician and account support engineer- She did VMS maintenance for the Israeli army during the draft- She is currently an L2 storage software support engineer

Why is this clown on the front page with his better half while I am not? My girlfriend could out-weld p

I will go as far as to consider registering the partnership at a civil notary...I will not, however, partake in ceremonies that have their roots in organized religion.

Darn, even notaries have their toots in organized religion!

NOTARII was the term given to shorthand writers who in the early days of the Christian Church reported the examinations and trials of the early Christian martyrs and confessors. They were employed to take down in writing the whole judicial process of the Roman judges against the martyrs, and to write out the circumstances of their examination and passion. The early notary recorded the questions put to the Martyrs and the answers they gave.

The first institution of these NOTARII at Rome was under the Emperor Fabian. Notaries were also employed to take down the discourse of eloquent preachers. By this means many of St Chrystostom's sermons were preserved.

I will not, however, partake in ceremonies that have their roots in organized religion. So no, I would not consider getting married.

Marriage went on for centuries (maybe millenia) without organized religion's involvement. The early Christian church had no marriage services, and did not keep records of who was married to whom. That
was a civil job.

When the Roman Empire collapsed, the church took over registering of marriages and births because there was nobody else to do it. (That's
also how the Pope ended up administering so much of Italy: the job needed to be done and no one else was around.)

The notion that Christianity (or Judaism, or whatever) invented marriage
is silly. Marriage (at least here in the USA) serves explicit legal
purposes that have nothing to do with religion. There has been more than
one case wherein I have gotten a mindless paper-shuffling droid to shut up and do his job by saying "I'm her husband", which cuts through rubbish like nothing else.

I dunno what the legal situation is where you are, but I'd be astonished if there's a quicker way to establish in people's minds that two people go together than to say "We're married". Why do you think so many gay people want to get married? To get official recognition for their rights.

...but I will not be lured into the naive and stupidly romantic gesture of telling everyone this will be "forever".

Relationships are not easy. I think it's precisely the fact that I'm determined to stay married that will enable me to do so. If I said "I'm not making any promises," that would create insecurity for both of us ("Did I make him mad? Does he want to leave?"), thereby making it more likely that we'd fight and give up.

Genuine commitment is a self-fulfilling prophecy - and so is the lack the

Why did you do that? Don't you know those things can live for months on just one reply? plus, you tried to be reasonable with it, that's like gourmet cuisine to them. you're almost as bad as people who feed squirrels at national parks.

I understand the whole "slashdot geeks have no girlfriends" joke but really, why wouldn't a geek have a geeky girlfriend? I'm a geek, and I have a cute geeky girlfriend. We met online, she got me into World of Warcraft, and she is better at repairing laptops (soldering included) than I am. Each of us tried dating (and eventually marrying) non-geeks in the past and it never worked out; when we found each other it was a perfect fit.As for this being front-page/. material, I'm not so sure it deserved to be. D

"The moral of the story for all you geeks is: expect women to like you; do not be afraid to challenge them; if you aren't decisive, then fake it; expect them to yield to your boldness; and learn how to dance, because few things are more indicative of a man's confidence than his willingness to make a fool of himself on the dance floor."

Screw that, I'm going to have an operation and become a businesswoman.

Person puts computer together while boyfriend watches. Why is this on the front page of slashdot?

First, a self-professed geek (see author bio), has a girlfriend. This alone deserves several duplicates on slashdot front page. Second, astonishingly, she is not ugly. This would deserve to be on the NYTimes or FoxNews. Third, he manages to combine voyeurism and shiny new hardware - all this documented with color pictures !

Of course with this as the reason for building the new PC, (from TFA):...had started to make the most amazing grinding noises. It had also been giving me lots of error messages......it's obvious that basic troubleshooting wasn't on the list.
But then again they both get total geek cred for finding any excuse to have a new computer!:)

Person puts computer together while boyfriend watches. Why is this on the front page of slashdot?

1. That person is female. Not that girls can't build computers, but rather that...2. A geek has a female SO.3. Power tools.4. Shiny new hardware.5. Girl with power tools and shiny new hardware.6. Quite attractive girl with power tools and shiny new hardware.7. Quite attractive geek girl with... you know the rest.

I think it ain't so much that it's a computer or that she's female. It's a combination thereof. Oh,

This article doesn't read so much as "hey guys, it's possible for a girl to put together a PC"

And even if it did, how patronising is THAT? This isn't 1870. In the past 150 years, women have discovered elements, invented whole new areas of mathematics, unravelled DNA, walked in space, become Prime Ministers and Presidents, run multinational companies, fought and died in wars, raced stock cars, and... well, pretty much everything men can do except a very narrowly defined range of elite athletic performance.

And the only reason it took so long is that we men did everything in our power not to let them.

Now, we're supposed to wonder that a woman used a screwdriver without impaling herself through the hand?

You're overstating it. There's no indication that the *ONLY* reason women didn't do these things historically was being prevented by men.Sure, that was *one* of the reasons, but not the only one.

I agree though that it's completely underwhelming that a woman is capable of putting together a PC -- after having been adviced on part-list by her nerd boyfriend and having him assist her. Many women are even capable of putting together a PC with no help whatsoever, which is also not really a spectaculat feat.

It is the first time I see a lady assembling a PC for pleasure.Look at what she plans to do with this PC (games, photoshop,etc) and see the final price $US 1417.She spent hours to get it.If It was purely rationnal she would order the desktop from Dell or HP or from a local shop. she would choose a less expensive configuration.

This is truly for fun and for her pleasure. This is a novelty for me.

Most girls find such things boring. boring not because they couldn't understand it, boring because it is usually p

Actually it reads more like "Lookie I've brainwashed my chickie and can get her to do the work when she asks for help". It also comes across as condescending. Of course a woman with sufficient interest and motivation could put together a PC, or at least many/most women will be able to. To me that's a given. Having a vagina doesn't suddenly mean you're incapable of putting together what essentially is a technical jigsaw puzzle.Hell I'm more interested in software so while I've fiddled with adding components,

This is the sort of thing that should have been introduced in schools ages ago. Especially with the number of outdated computers they've gotten rid of. These would be perfect fodder for hardware classes.

And it really doesn't take more than a couple hours for all the kids to get a hands on experience with it.

Well, the RIAA didn't sue someone for ridiculous sums yesterday, no politician showed that he's a complete tool in the presence of computers, and given that it's Summer, there's little that actually moves in terms of laws, so no laws against liberties have been passed recently, no new hardware came out this week and for some odd reason Steve ran out of chairs.

For crying out loud, it's a computer case, not a swingset and not furniture... The point of the screw is to hold things in place, not to fix them so fast that they are going to be resistant to coming out.

I was taught that you _ALWAYS_ hand-tighten screws on a computer case, and even then only just to the point that it just stops turning freely, because that way you won't accidentally strip the threads.

Oye vey dude, my relatively cheap electric drill has a torque setting. With an electric screwdriver I imagine it's pretty easy to get a feel for the torque on the screw, not to mention any settings it might have.

I've stripped more threads by hand than I have with an electric, even then I can probably count them on one hand.

This is the "Vista Experience Index". It predicts the experience you will have running Vista on that hardware relative to a projected ideal. The maximum achievable with the current version of Vista is 5.9. Microsoft hopes they can up this to a maximum of 6.2 when Service Pack 1 is released. (The numbers are out of 100, and the numbers for OSX and different Linux distributions are Microsoft confidential.)

I'm a girl. I build and rip apart computers all the time. And every time I do, MY girlfriend is always bugging me to let her get in there with the screwdriver! Maybe I should write up a story and take some pictures: "The lesbian geek couple mess with computer innards!" Oooohhh.

I'm a girl. I build and rip apart computers all the time. And every time I do, MY girlfriend is always bugging me to let her get in there with the screwdriver! Maybe I should write up a story and take some pictures: "The lesbian geek couple mess with computer innards!" Oooohhh.

I'm a girl. I build and rip apart computers all the time. And every time I do, MY girlfriend is always bugging me to let her get in there with the screwdriver! Maybe I should write up a story and take some pictures: "The lesbian geek couple mess with computer innards!" Oooohhh.

I guarantee you would make the front page with this easily. Seriously. I would bet money on it.

Having seen this screen shot [extremetech.com] I had to ask, what is a Windows Experience Index? It seems this machine has a score of 5.6. Great, what's that out of Microsoft? 10? That's pretty crappy. Maybe it's out of six?

So I googled for a bit and eventually found this page [microsoft.com]. Which says "The base scores currently range from 1 to 5.9." WTF? So it's out of 4.9 and you just add 1 for fun, is that it? I wonder if it's a linear scale or what.. maybe it's logarithmic.

If this is how broken the business rules of their software are, I can only imagine how broken the implementation must be.

Having seen this screen shot I had to ask, what is a Windows Experience Index? It seems this machine has a score of 5.6. Great, what's that out of Microsoft? 10? That's pretty crappy. Maybe it's out of six?

Not every number is "out of" something. For example, the speed ratings AMD put on their CPUs.

So I googled for a bit and eventually found this page. Which says "The base scores currently range from 1 to 5.9." WTF? So it's out of 4.9 and you just add 1 for fun, is that it? I wonder if it's a linear sca

Actually, it quite useful for developers if nothing else. If you know you application takes lots of resources up, you can check the WEI of the machine which will give you a far better indication of overall performance than trying to figure it out yourself.

In other words it gives n00bs the ability to see how shit or great their system is without know how to benchmark, and it gives devs the ability to know how well their app is likely to perform.

If this is how broken the business rules of their software are, I can only imagine how broken the implementation must be.
Microsoft, you're a disgrace.

I agree completely. This shows how vile Microsoft is as a company, by choosing this absurd scale without a nice round number as a maximum. Seriously, decisions like this show how the company should be broken up and have the workers sold into slavery - brothels for the women, while the men can be sent down mines in third world countries.

Forget DRM, this arbitary scale of the Windows Experience Index is what will really kill off the operating system.

It is so obvious that the scale should have had a maximum of 10, with the current level of computers sitting at around 1.5. And in many years to come when computer hardware has progressed enough to surpass 10, they should make it constantly play a looped voice saying "DOES NOT COMPUTE" while emitting smoke from the hard drive. This is the only sensible solution.

Run Word or another word processor for college stuffHeavy Internet surfing (multiple windows)Store and play plenty of musicStore and manage big digital art files, including many-layered Photoshop filesOperate quietlyPlay the latest games without turning details way down

Dropping $400 on a GPU when gaming is at the bottom of her list then skimping on $100 of memory when she's trying to run large PSDs on Vista screams of a gamer who once again ignored what he was being asked to get in favor of what he thought was cool.

2GB of ram will just about get Vista running with a little left over for smaller PSDs. The size PSDs she's talking about will be thrashing the hard drive to run. Doubling that ram up to 4GB, what's generally regarded as the sweet spot for Vista anyway, and dropping to a $300 graphics card would serve her far better for her main needs and let her still run pretty much any modern game with pretty decent quality settings.

But, hey, he gets to reassure himself it's a sweet gaming rig with that quad core processor and the 8800. Just a shame that was lowest on her list of requirements and likely added after a few rounds of, "Are you sure you wouldn't like to play games? I know they're not your main focus. But surely you'd like the option, right?"

Even ignoring that she plays Civ IV and Oblivion (both of which will run just fine on much cheaper hardware), he commits a cardinal sin amongst gamers too: He bought what he figured would be great for running a game in the future (Spore), not what was needed for her level of gaming now. Spore won't be out until sometime next year and probably late spring at the earliest from what they're saying. That $100 off the GPU now wouldn't cost her much right now, would get her the memory that would really aid her, and she'll likely want to upgrade to whatever the latest and greatest GPU is in a year's time for Spore anyway. At that point, it'll be pretty much guaranteed that $300 on nVidia's 9xxx series will beat $400 on the 8xxx series now and have whatever fun and exciting new features the 9xxx series has that nVidia worked with Maxis to get in to Spore.

It's cool to share building their PC with your girlfriend/wife/mother/friend/anyone who wouldn't normally build one, giving them a real sense of ownership and achievement with their new PC. But fooling yourself in to believing they need what you think is cool, rather than actually listening to their needs, is a great way to undo a lot of that when they realize they got you something cool rather than built what was right for them.

And, yes, this comes from a guy who sat there while his wife tapped on dozens of keyboards because she figured I'd make sure it simply worked and so the most important thing to her was the keyboard felt right. To me, that was crazy. To her, it was what mattered. So, crazy or not, I listened and made sure she got what felt perfect to her.

4GB of ram as a "sweet spot".. just to run the OS.. is beyond crazy. Personally, I hope Microsoft drop support for XP early in an attempt to force people to upgrade to Vista, sending droves of people off to run Linux (or at least a Mac) and completely kill themselves in the market place. It's just insane.

My significant other plays video games, has a far better computer than I and she actually played Planetarion. I don't consider my story newsworthy.

This is just another way of saying: "Hey, World! Here on Slashdot, we consider women far inferior to men when it comes to technology. We can't imagine girls interested in computers, so we will make it a headline whenever a girl tries something techy."

I'm usually not one that compares slashdot with the digg, but seeing TFA I have to wonder whether this might have something to do with the firehose being recently opened to the everyone? As we know from all sorts of media, be it TV (24h "news" networks), digg, youtube etc. the most popular story isn't necessarily the most informative story (unfortunately quite the contrary).

My girl friend is building a new machine(Intel Q6600, evga T1, XFX 8800 GTS 640, OCZ 2gig) next week and then putting Gentoo stage 1(we know its unsupported, that makes it more fun) on it. Shes going to do this while I play with her Wii. I guess I should post a story on it?

Is your geek girlfriend super into games or something? She would've benefited more from Ubuntu or OS X, which can be had of course...:P At the very least, get her the performance enhancement of XP!! VISTA!??! I bet you guys break up in a week.

I think the price tag is a bit funny. Apart from the gaming, I have more or less the same requirements, but I only spent 65 Euro to upgrade my five year old Athlon XP. Maybe it helps that I am using Linux?

Anyway, I reused an Athlon64 3000+ from a previous upgrade, and for single threaded applications it is still very close to the top performing CPUs. In the end I only had to buy a new main board (45 Euro) and a new memory module (15 Euro on ebay), and the rest found itself.

Operating System: Windows Vista Ultimate
Glenda has been using my computer for months with Vista installed, and she likes it. Also, Vista is required for DirectX 10, which means she'll need it if she wants the games on her PC to look as good as the games on my PC. And if they didn't, I'd never hear the end of it. So Vista it is!

Fine, she likes Vista. But why Vista Ultimate? According to Microsoft's own comparison chart [microsoft.com], ultimate just gives additional backup, encryption, remote desktop, and fax & scan capabilities... none of which are apparently needed from her list of needs.

"Building" a computer this is not. It is "assembling" a computer. Go get blank chips, resistors, capacitors, boards, volt meter, and use your soldering iron to "Build" a system. If you have a bunch of cards and an empty case, that is "assembling."

Until systems are cheap enough and treated like a cell phone, I guess this qualifies as 'building' for most folks.

And you wonder why IT is so short on females. It's because of the condescending... ooooh, look, they can even build computers... attitudes. Try working around that atmosphere for a few weeks and you'll either quit or be arrested for going postal.

The only hard part about building a computer - for females - is having some guy who thinks that his dick is an essential tool for building anything try to take over. It's no harder than, say, sewing up something with 17 pattern pieces. The instructions on recent mobos are easy to follow... easier than the care tags on some clothing.

As a girl, I'd have to say "so what" about this posting.
I built my own Hack-intosh from spare parts and I'm in the process of doing it again for a friend. I'm the network administrator for a hospital. Shock! Horror! She knows how to build computers. Please, can everyone just get over it. It makes my blood boil when I see a tech story on girls being able to do to same tech work as men.
Guys can claim hard physical labor, but women are very suited for tech work.
Tests show we're better at logic problems, our hands are normally slimmer, so we can reach into small places, and women are statistically better team players.

The article was supposed to be about the girl and her experience building the computer. Her comments took up all of 10% of the article. The rest of it was all the author's opinion of why he chose certain components. This smacks of an editor asking for a campy, personal bit and it gets interjected into the "How to Build a Mid-priced, Mediocre Gaming System."

While I can appreciate Glenda's (the girlfriend) desire to experience this, I pity the pain she'll feel over the next two years and I hope she blames her boyfriend. Whenever something goes wrong, she'll question herself of whether or not she did something wrong. When she calls him to fix it, he'll likely push it off as "This is your computer; you built it." When it can no longer handle new applications or games since 2GB is the realistic minimum for Vista, she'll wonder why her boyfriend let her install it when she could have been appreciating the speed of this system on Linux or XP.